Comments on: The Only Sci-Fi Explanation of Hominid Aliens that Makes Scientific Sensehttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:57:08 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1By: Larryhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5573
Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:06:02 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5573“Our corner of the universe thereby became the home of Vulcans, Romulans, Cardassians, Humans, Betazoids, and other hominid species which are all decedents of the First Intelligent Species”.

Pretty sure the word you’re looking for there is “descendant”.

Given the overall quality of the comments, I’m surprised this slipped through.

]]>By: Matt B.http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5572
Sun, 07 Aug 2011 06:04:56 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5572In the past several days I have encountered three instances of people spelling the past tense of “lead” the same as the infinitive. This is wrong; the past tense is “led”.

Phil Farrand, in The Nitpicker’s Guide for Next Generation Trekkers, debunks the panspermia idea. His argument pretty much boils down to “How do you plant genetic seeds that naturally evolve toward a target without including the target that they’re aiming for, thereby making the evolution unnecessary?”

SG-1 was a Star Trek that didn’t need spaceships or a biological panspermia theory, but it did need a linguistic panspermia theory. In one episode they simply asked a guy if he could understand them and waited thirty seconds for the audience to forget that he shouldn’t be able to. His people had been taken from Mongolia at least a thousand years earlier.

Have you heard of Raelianism?

Boy, that Voyager episode with the dinosaurs is so Earth-centric (typical for Star Trek). Why didn’t they find descendents of Vulcan’s or Qo’noS’s or Betazed’s analog of dinosaurs? Always with the Earth, these people.

]]>By: Jeffhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5571
Fri, 05 Aug 2011 08:40:07 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5571Steven said: “The only difference, then, between Creationism and the Hominid Panspermia Theory is that God is replaced with an ancient alien.The only difference, then, between Creationism and the Hominid Panspermia Theory is that God is replaced with an ancient alien.”

Well, here’s the thing: in the fictional universe we’re looking at, which in several noticeable ways (‘warp’ drives included) bears little resemblance to what we think we know of our own, there *are* hominids everywhere. They vastly outnumber anything else. That being the data we’re stuck with, we’d have to consider theories that fit our data. The Ancient Continent of Panspermia would be worth considering I’d imagine. Perhaps the IDers have even found a universe where their theory, forced, agenda-driven and unsupported by evidence in ours, might make some sense. That said, I’d go with Occam’s razor and eliminate it anyway, especially if in that universe it were shown that these hominids were genetically close relatives. There are simpler possible explanations than a God or gods, such as Panspermia.

Incidentally, we’ve had artificial selection at least since the dawn of agriculture, haven’t we? How is Panspermia anything but a high-tech version of artificial selection?

My personal favorite hypothesis is slightly different from Panspermia, in that no seeding of primordial soups was necessary, just colonists. These hominids really *are* hominids in my version, some mutated naturally as their populations became isolated (adapting to their environment and to cumulative local quirks in sexual selection). The colonizing of space was relatively recent (in geological time) and the various human colonies have had enough time to diverge quite a bit but in many cases the divergence is fairly superficial.

I don’t think we can really rule out some innate advantage to our body plan, at least until we have a fuller understanding of *why* we have big brains. If the body plan is innately superior and big brains are advantageous enough to evolve relatively often, that would be a hypothesis, but all this being speculative it seems a bit of an… ugly universe (and ultimately our data is indeed very contrived, and the universe in question is the product of imaginations not evolution, but let’s not spoil the illusion).

The advantage of my favorite hypothesis, the “new-Earth Panspermia” (see what I did there) is that it can fit the data (a rampant body plan in our fictional universe) to just about any hypothesis for our evolving a big brain that I can think of. If big brains are primarily the product of sexual selection–absurd, costly, ungainly and expensive (but beautiful) like peacock feathers–then we’d still only need to evolve the body plan once, so the odds wouldn’t matter much.

Shipwreck some of these hominids in different environments as “Robinson Crusoe” species, relatively bereft of technology but with big brains intact, I’d expect to see significant variation from world to world, given time. Especially if the environment were quite different from the one that evolved the original hominids, and if there were niches in the ecosystem we could evolve into (such as in a new-ish world or after a big depopulation of indigenous species).

so to answer the “where are they?” question: we’re already here, at least in this hypothetical universe where we have a lot of hominids to explain…

]]>By: Nealhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5570
Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:35:31 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5570I believe the SWTC theorizes that human-like life in the Star Wars galaxy has evolved to be human-like because humans have been an evolutionary force all across the galaxy for longer than the recorded history of tens of thousands of years.
]]>By: dave chamberlinhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5569
Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:17:00 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5569Ah science fiction, another one of those contradictions in terms like jumbo shrimp, the truth, industrial parks, and military intelligence. A hat tip to the comment left by #13, “the plain fact is that we are trying to judge the contents of the universe through a keyhole.” The great physicist Enrico Fermi nailed it when he interrupted his colleagues chatting about UFO’s with the comment now known as the Fermi Paradox, he simply asked “where are they?” The earth has had life on it for four billion years, complex life for half a billion years and intelligent life for only 50,000 years. If their were life forms that could colonize other planets wouldn’t they have come here? Here is a fun thought experiment, let us us conjecture that we humans advance to the ability to either inhabit or seed with complex life one more planet every one hundred years and there after continue exponential growth at that same rate. In just three thousand years we would have reached over one billion planets. It is all just idle speculation of course, we are still stuck here on this pale blue dot with a sample size of one, but what I propose is forget about our shape and form and think about our human intelligence and ambition, Earth was a rich and verdant garden left without a gardner for billions of years. It is an argument that intelligent life that can spread would have and because it hasn’t intelligent life must be very very rare indeed. After all, where are they?
]]>By: Tom T. Moorehttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5568
Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:37:46 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5568The problem with your hypothesis is that it’s too short-sighted. You have not considered the idea that there may be other universes out there–actually there are billions–some as small as the head of a pin, I’ve been told, and some more complex than our universe. That’s a really difficult concept for most people to consider, given our religious teachings.

During what I call my “active meditations” one of the beings I communicate with is a member of my soul group or “cluster” as my Guardian Angel calls it who’s having a life on a water planet in the Sirius B Star System. Here’s what I asked and his reply about hominids or humanoids:

Antura, can you tell me what percentage of the universe is made up of humanoids?

“Yes, certainly a good percentage Tom.”

Is it above 35%?

“Yes, a little higher. Forty percent would be fairly accurate Tom.”

Were humanoids created by one society?

“This is a little like the chicken and the egg theory Tom. When Creator created this Universe, calls went out and several humanoid societies you might say responded. Naturally from them grew the large percentage of the universe you have now you see. So to answer your question, it was not just one society but a few.”

If you wish to read more questions and answers, visit my website http://www.TheGentleWayBook.com and click on Articles and News where all my free weekly newsletters are posted.

]]>By: Brenhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5567
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:33:48 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5567@ #30 Chris,
How do we know that an hominid didn’t mate with another primate producing the homo sapien missing link?
]]>By: Rosshttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5566
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 02:04:36 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5566It is even entirely possible that alien nucleotides will have 2 base pairs, in which case their genetic code is written in binary, or ten base pairs for that matter. That would be pretty sweet.

Beyond that, it should be noted that cephalization (focusing of nerves into one region, leading to development of the brain) is extremely common among animals. And it’s not out of the question to suggest that alien life may also evolve cephalization because it gives an animal an information processing advantage over its counterparts, something I imagine can be important in any environment. From there evolution points to radial or bilateral symmetry; it is uncommon for a cephalized animal to have no noticeable symmetry.

With bilateral symmetry, the basic animal layout is a tube with feeding on one side and excretion on the other. This still leaves nature a lot of options and by no means points to alien hominins; however, I expect that if intelligent aliens are found, they are more likely to be bilateral than radially symmetric because this allows the animal to further focus sensory organs that may develop, rather than have them dispersed around the animal. For example, imagine trying to read a book with 6 eyes all pointing in different directions. It would be rather hard. Furthermore, depth perception is much greater in animals such as humans where the eyes are close together and can conjointly focus on an object.

Whatever life we find, I suggest it will be… somewhat… morphologically similar to species we have here on earth because of similar advantages evolution will seek out.

]]>By: Thomashttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5565
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:37:42 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5565Good. Now that we’ve explained that, let’s move on to faster-than-light travel and the warp drive, which the “elder” species doubtlessly needed to seed the galaxy.
]]>By: Stevenhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/2011/07/12/the-only-sci-fi-explanation-of-hominid-aliens-that-makes-scientific-sense/#comment-5564
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:34:55 +0000http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/?p=4528#comment-5564I have a more scientific criticism of the Hominid Panspermia Theory of Science Fiction Aliens. I know we’re talking about sci-fi here – but …

Evolution is an undirected biological process, dependent on genetic mutation and natural selection. It is impossible to predict what evolution will produce, because every tiny change in the environment and every random mutation of the genome can enormously effect the subsequent adaptations. As Kurt Wise puts it, “if … the evolutionary tape were played again, human life would not be expected. In fact, even if it were replayed a million times or more, man would not be expected again.”

Outside of Star Trek, the only place I’ve seen this idea of forward-planned evolution is in the pseudo-scientific writings of “Intelligent Design” creationists. They suggest that God put all the genetic machinery necessary for the evolution of man into the first primordial genome, because they cannot accept that evolution can explain all the diversity of life (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary). This is one of the the “gaps” in which ID Creationists choose to place their God. The only difference, then, between Creationism and the Hominid Panspermia Theory is that God is replaced with an ancient alien.